... I saw and read in print somewhere ...that bullets do not hit rain drops because the pressure wave built up ahead of the projectile shatters them and pushes remnants aside. What do you think?
When I first heard of that theory some years back, my first thought was
How in the world would anybody know?Thinking it through since, I'm pretty sure that even so, a dead-on "hit" would slow the bullet somewhat, because the vaporization of the raindrop would be an expenditure (a drain) of energy, the only source of which is the movement of the bullet.
If the impact of the Mach cone with the raindrop were glancing, the Mach cone of a supersonic bullet being air that has been compressed almost to solidity, I'd expect its off-center impact to divert the bullet somewhat, much the same as if
the jacket itself had struck the raindrop.
